Workers and Soldiers, Dogs and Cats: Mayakovsky’s poetry for children

In the introductory piece on Mayakovsky earlier in this series, we discovered that this chaotic and volatile Old Bolshevik became required reading for generations of Soviet schoolchildren after his death in 1930. We all know there’s no literary turn-off like the stuff you were forced to read at school. And Mayakovsky, or the parts of his work that were deemed suitable, understandably became a turn-off for many people.

Understandably, because for all the wild and beautiful things he created during his short life, Mayakovsky was also a prolific sloganeer. After all, he did not envision himself as a lyrical poet; he saw his own lyricism as a failing, and made every effort to “[step] on the throat of his own song” in order to be a good socialist writer. In the course of his entire creative activity, Mayakovsky generated a vast volume of political art. He supported the Bolshevik cause with poems, mottos, artwork, plays, cinema scenarios (he acted in them too), not to mention his famous series of agit-prop posters for the Russian State Telegraph Agency. And of course, being Mayakovsky, he didn’t so much present his point of view as drive it home with a great big sledgehammer. His poetry for children, written in 1925-1929, arguably comes from this side of his creative output. Of course, it was subsequently appropriated by the Stalinist cultural milieu, and for many years was standard children’s reading. That effectively makes it political art no matter how it was intended.

So, what does children’s poetry by an avant-garde Bolshevik author look like? Well, unfortunately I can give you only a partial impression here. What for me is the most enjoyable aspect of these poems – the wordplay, the rhymes, the silly jokes – would be a life’s work to translate adequately. But I can give you some idea of the content, if you will forgive my less than elegant literal translations. Take this excerpt from a poem called Let’s Go on a Stroll :

This is a bourgeois – look at his belly.

His job is to eat and to stroll.

He is as fat as a rubber ball.

And he likes other people to work for him.

He doesn’t know how to do anything,

And sparrows are smarter than him.

Strolling through Moscow with the young Ivan (Vania) and his nanny, we see a serie of such characters, clearly divided along lines of Good and Bad. On the Bad (or perhaps Foolish) side: the bourgeois mentioned above; old ladies praying at church; an over-powdered, fashionable lady who talks and talks. On the Good side: a Red Army soldier; Deputies at the Moscow Soviet; a worker; a man with a horse and cart; Komsomol members. And of course, because this is Mayakovsky, a nice furry cat and a poor doggie.

And the nanny works, leading kids around.

The kids really pester the nanny.

My nanny has a headscarf made of calico.

You should be nice to your nanny.

(Nannies were, and are, not limited to wealthy Russian families).

This poem stands out, but it is not by any means typical. While a few verge on the agit-prop, on the whole Mayakovsky presents stories and cautionary tales which happen to be written in the language of his time, place and convictions. In What is Good and What is Bad?, a father explains to his small son about things such as soap, weather, chores and standing up for your comrades. This is my Little Book About the Lighthouse and the Sea is about the crucial role of the lighthouse (maiak in Russian, which allows for a beautiful last line playing on Mayakovsky’s name). The Fire Horse (with the gorgeous rhyming name in Russian of Kon’-Ogon’) features a little boy who wants to be in the Red Cavalry and who, with the help of his father and a series of friendly craftsmen, obtains a beautiful flame-red rocking horse.

Then there is the entirely unpolitical Every Page is a Lion or an Elephant: a charming catalogue of animals at the zoo, including my personal favourite lines from any poem (in silly rhyming translation here).

This beast here is called a llama.

Llama child, and llama mama.

Personally, I like these poems. The humour, and the linguistic acrobatics, and the helter-skelter rhyme schemes far outweigh the preachy aspect; and I do not like to be preached to, not at all. However, I first read them of my own volition, as a grown-up who already enjoyed Mayakovsky, and I suspect that this makes all the difference. This is not to say that children could not enjoy Mayakovsky; just look at the success of Dr. Seuss, not to mention his instrumental role in teaching children to use and enjoy language. (My old English teacher always said she could tell instantly if a student had read Seuss as a child). But the fact of Mayakovsky being required reading for so long has understandably damned these poems in the eyes of many people (in the same way that many Brits will shudder when Chaucer is mentioned); and the political content, in this day and age, cannot be ignored easily. The reader can find it objectionable, find it agreeable, find it interesting; but there’s no question of setting it aside.

However, I do not believe that Mayakovsky’s poetry for children is to be praised or condemned on the basis of its political content. Like many of the works of children’s poetry now regarded as classic, from Struwwelpeter to Dr. Seuss and beyond, these poems tend to carry moral and ethical messages. Some are undeniably Bolshevik, but many more are fairly universal: keep clean, help your friends, be nice to animals. For all the distinctive nature of the author and his time, there is much that is familiar.

I am sorry that my limited resources allow me to give non-Russian speaking readers only a glimpse of the world Mayakovsky created for his younger readers; for all those who do read Russian, I would thoroughly recommend these poems, and especially for intermediate to advanced learners who are ready to discover the joys of Russian wordplay. It is long since time to assess Mayakovsky on his merits, and to reclaim his work from a political and social order he did not live to see.

You can see these poems online at Maksim Moshkov’s Library